They decided he could handle grief.
It's time you learned the ways of the world, they told him. They couldn't change the world for him, so they would change him to fit into the world.
For the first time, they began to withhold their love. Tough love, they called it. He didn't know any better. He only experienced the tough.
You'll understand when you get older, they'd say. You'll thank us later.
All he knew was that these two wonderful people one day stopped being wonderful. While he counted on them for everything in the past, that all suddenly stopped.
Everything became transactional. You have to do this before you get that. Before, everything was freely given, and he was happy in his little corner of heaven. Suddenly that was all snatched away by the very people he relied on the most.
He would never get it back again.
Oh, he tried. He tried so hard at first. But eventually, after repeated failure, he had to give up. He had to resign himself to the fact that they had changed. The people he had trusted to always love him could no longer be trusted. His old world was gone. He had to grieve it.
All the while, in the middle of that grief, the two people who had abandoned him became more demanding than ever. Sure they still had smiles on their faces, sure they still spoke in warm tones, but he could no longer count on them to be there in times of need.
He had to learn to count on himself.
Maybe it was a lesson they intentionally wanted to teach, but the world he was entering became a lonely one. A world where the only person who could love him was himself. They still claimed to love him, but they didn't. Not like they used to.
Spring had passed. All the leaves had fallen. His world became a barren wasteland, and they taught him that he could only love himself if he lived up to their standards. Sometimes when he did, he would feel wonderful for a few fleeting moments, but he usually did not live up to their standards, so he learned to stop loving himself.
No one did.